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Wednesdsay May 17, 2000 THE OAKVILLE BEAVER A5 Books for Babies kit of learning fun Oakville Public Library, along with its three Halton counterparts, has just launched a program to further the joy of reading and increase parents' awareness of the importance of literacy for young children. The Books for Babies kit was developed in response to evidence which demonstrates how the intellectual stimulation of children during the early years of child hood influences brain development and sets the founda tions for competence and coping skills, language, learn ing, behaviour and health. The kit was designed by staff from the four Halton public libraries to encourage positive experiences such as talking with baby, telling stories, singing rhymes, giving a reassuring hug or having fun playing. All mothers of babies bom in Halton will receive the Books for Babies kit, through the Halton Healthy Babies, healthy Children's Post-partum Enhancement Program in which public health nurses visit the mothers of newborns in their homes. Each kit contains a Calendar and Reading Guide which provides parents with information, activities and suggestions for shared reading activities, a board book, a gift coupon and an evaluation card, all wrapped in a can vas book bag. When they present the gift coupon at their local library, new mothers will receive an audio cassette of nursery rhymes donated by the three speech centres in Halton including the Child Development Centre in Oakville. Support for the program came from the Healthy Community Funders of Halton, the Halton Healthy Babies, Healthy Children Program and City Parent/ Metroland Printing, Publishing and Distributing Ltd. A T T E N T IO N ! NEW EATERY IN OUR AREA SUNDAY BRUNCH GUARANTEED JO IN T H E H I _ W IW M IM L IT T L E M O U N T IE J o in u s fo r g r e a t C a n a d ia n s e r v ic e a r m a tm o s p h e r e ! CLUB E N JO Y O U R T W O SEPARATE Photo by Riziero Vertolli Raising children with healthy minds is the goal of a new pro ject developed by the four Halton public libraries. Books for Babies aims to spread the joy of reading and increase par ents' awareness o f the importance of literacy for young chil dren. That's M adelaine Perica-5 months, with mom Angela at the launch for Books for Babies at the Oakville Central Library last week. D I N IN O A R E A S L A R G E M ONDAY A tt-U -C a n -E a t P a s ta N ig h t S M O K E-FR EE D IN IN G R O O M W EDNESDAY 1 p o u n d n ig h t fe a tu r in g 1 p o u n d fa jita s S A T U R D A Y /S U N D A Y P r im e R ib D in n e r S p e c ia l (M M f KDM Contest put students' mapping skills to test Computers used to create maps from raw data K a re n R o b b in s SPECIAL TO THE BEAVER Students from C rescent School in W illow dale have won the first Ontario-wide high school geog cal inform ation system s (GIS test. Joyce Savoline, H alton Re chairm an, N ichole Beck, a t from A ppleby C ollege who ir the contest, and Colleen Ra> from Environm ent System s Re Institute C anada (ESRI), pre the winners with plaques and briefcases last week at the H alton Regional A dm inistration Build GIS is a softw are program used in geography classes Ontario. Beck said it is an ad com puter program that allow: users to create m aps from data. The students were given a scenario taken from real data about ambulance services in Oakvillie and Burlington. The students were to pretend that they w orked for the Halton Region and had to find out which areas were under serviced. Thlis was based on call volum es and re times - it a call diJrTt Teach it: nation within 7 m inutes than tl was under serviced. From this inform ation, tl dents had to determ ine if there were new areas where they should place an ambulance station. One o f the winners, David Luk, 15, said it took them about two weeks to finish the project. "At the beginning it was really tough to get started," he said. His teacher, John N icolucci said the students learned a lot from the experience. "It was hard to form ulate the problem and figure out how to get started," he said. "But at the end when we were rushing to get done, new ideas came up. By then it was too late." Other team m em bers included Jeff Singer, 16, Aaron Glazer, 16 and Templar Trinaistich, 15. Savoline said the Region started using GIS system s in 1995. She esti mated that 150 staff m em bers use it on a daily basis for things like pro ducing high quality maps, analyzing ambulance response times, waste and w ater in frastru ctu re m anagem ent, biosolids program s, hydrogeology, planning and d em ographics and crime analysis. Colleen Raym ond, who is in the education services d ep artm en t at ESRI Canada, presented C rescent School with GIS extension softw are, which will give them a little more functionality and more capabilities. Raymond was quite pleased with the contest. "ERSI Canada has been working hard to encourage municipal and corporate participation in educa tion and GIS aw areness. This is a prime exam ple o f a fabulous oppor tunity for students to w ork on a real world project with m unicipal data that had been actually analyzed and w orked on in Halton Region." Beck said she plans to run the contest again next year. 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